20 Years Later: A 2006 Southwest Road Trip
Twenty years ago, in 2006, my brother Alex and I pointed his car east out of Arizona and took the long way home. One week, six states, and a little under fifteen hundred miles of national parks, monuments, and roadside stops. Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Arches, Canyonlands, Monument Valley, Mesa Verde, with plenty of good road between them.
I went back and retold the whole trip here, one post for each day of it. Start with Day One and ride along from there.
In the spring of 2006 my brother Alex and I loaded up his Mazda 6 in Arizona and drove home. Not the fast way. The long way, through…
Day one ended in Sedona. Day two started early, because we had a long way to go and two of the biggest stops on the whole trip waiting…
Day two ended in the high country near Bryce, cold air and a wet day behind us. Day three was the drive to Moab, the longest stretch of…
Day three ended at the top of that climb, looking down at Moab in the valley. Day four was the payoff. The parks we had been driving toward…
Day four ended at the bottom of a dirt road we could not see, and with a gas station clerk telling us to go drive it again in…
We started the last day just outside Mesa Verde with a long way to go. Kansas City was the goal, the whole southwest corner of Colorado and everything…